An unhinged mob

[CapnAwesome]

Political violence goes coast to coast as Proud Boys and antifa activists clash in New York, Portland

Street beatings and melees broke out on both coasts this weekend during confrontations involving the Proud Boys and antifascists — ideologically opposed movements that both condone political violence and practice it with some regularity on their opponents.

Police in New York and Portland are investigating viral videos of the attacks but have not yet blamed either group. New York’s Democratic mayor, governor and attorney general, however, have accused the Proud Boys of instigating the weekend’s first act of violence. (Representatives for the Proud Boys could not immediately be reached.)

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New York, Friday

Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016 as a nationalist men’s club, was scheduled to speak at the Metropolitan Republican Club that evening about “Deep State Socialists” and “Western Values” — common themes for his group.

After the speech, about two dozen Proud Boys emerged from the club to find a similarly sized group of protesters waiting to confront them, including antifascists, as seen in cellphone videos. While antifascists, or “antifa” activists, are more loosely organized than the hierarchical, uniformed Proud Boys, both groups consider each other dangerous to U.S. society and condone violence to defend their notions of it.

“I recognized one” of the antifascists, McInnes later told HuffPost, recalling the confrontation. “He stole a Proud Boys MAGA hat and was immediately tuned up.”

Cellphone videos show an unidentified victim writhing on the sidewalk while several men take turns kicking him, and at least a dozen Proud Boys in uniform polo shirts, scream various slurs.

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Portland, Saturday

The next night, on the other side of the country, Proud Boys were reported among a right-wing group that marched through downtown Portland toward their ideological opponents.

Portland, which has long seen clashes between the far left and far right, has been consumed for two weeks with Black Lives Matter protests over a fatal police shooting in September. Those protests, in turn, provoked right-wing groups when video emerged last weekend of demonstrators blocking traffic and beating on a passing driver’s car.

So on Saturday evening, a conservative group organized a “flash march for Law and Order” — marching toward the downtown plaza where a memorial had been set up for the police shooting victim, Patrick Kimmons.

“We’ve got Proud Boys running security,” one of the organizers said in a Facebook Live stream of the march.

Predictably, the marchers arrived at the plaza to find it full of counterprotesters chanting “Black Lives Matter.” The local antifascist group was among those live-tweeting from that side of Fourth Avenue.

The right-wing marchers paused on the other side of the street, waving U.S. flags and chanting back — “All Lives Matter,” and “U.S.A., U.S.A.!” and eventually shouted threats.

“Respect the memorial and vigil that’s going on over there,” a man with a loudspeaker said, as seen in one of several Facebook Live videos. “But if they come across the street, you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Portland police had apparently been expecting trouble and managed to dissuade it for half an hour or so by lining up in tactical gear along the street.

But after sundown, things kicked off.

The antifascists may have provoked the violence, according to Mike Bivins, a freelance reporter who documented the ensuing melee on Twitter. One of them burned an American flag as the Proud Boys and company were leaving, causing them to return. Another antifascist then doused the entire group with pepper spray, Bivins wrote.

From there, the scene devolved into something like an exponentially larger version of the Manhattan assault. (Explicit videos below).

While it’s hard to tell who is who in cellphone videos, a man stepped out from a sea of red “Make America Great Again” hats and punched someone in the opposite crowd in the face. Various fistfights and scuffles then started, with some people scrambling across the street, slamming into windows or collapsing to the pavement in a flurry of kicks.

Did you know that the proud boys aren't supposed to masturbate more than once a month. It's no surprise to me that they become violent!